208
PARTISAN REVIEW
minds in the intellectual world have been lost. We know that this
world has disintegrated, we know that the reason people talk about it
is that it no longer really exists as a world. When it was really a world
people really didn't talk about it; there was no need to talk about it.
But it seems to me that if you're going to talk about it, and
criticize... look, you made a criticism which
I
felt struck home though
it hurt me, you made a criticism that at a certain point there was a
neglect of the values of liberal democracy by people of the Marxist
tradition. Now, let's face it, that's true, and it hits me hard, but it's
true.
I
think
I
was one of those who got around...who began to see
the value of that point fairly early in the game among the people of
that tradition, but nevertheless there's truth to that and
I
acknowl–
edged that...I'm not interested just in polemics,
I
like polemics, but
I'm not interested just in polemics, but when you bring in Gore
Vidal and Garry Wills and the destruction of the family, no, that's
pushing it too hard.
MICHAEL NOVAK: My first remark is that the evening was marvelous
and coherent. My second remark is that it was most invigorating
because instead of self-congratulations we've opened up serious
criticism. Moreover, a criticism which was made international as
I
understand it from a garbled transcript
I
got today. Saul Bellow
made almost the very point in Stockholm yesterday that Hilton was
making, the same sort of accusation about the failure of intellectuals
in the United States. Solzhenitsyn made the same point, and other
figures have made the same point over the last several years. So it
seems to me we are on a fairly solid ground. There's something not
right in what we're doing it seems to me.
I
sometimes feel a sense of
gloom about where all of us who live in a liberal and democratic
world in which you can think freely, we number fewer than 20
percent of the human race or even have the possibility of being 10
percent of the human race and will it be less 20 years from now or 50
years from now. But it's not so much what's external
I
feel its what's
internal, the degree of dishonesty in the situation that is practiced
and that we are forced to practice everyday. The rhetorical binds in
which we find ourselves in are really quite frightening. So
I
person–
ally would like to thank you very much for this evening and for what
I
think was a very powerful warning.
PHILLIPS: I'm tempted to close on this note-there were a few people
who wanted to talk but-I'm tempted to close on this happy note
that we're all a happy family before we start disproving that. .. .Thank
you.
